MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have your clip which I obviously have not had time to read. Before we get into that, shall we, as proposed, just look ahead and consider what is going to be happening? We are going to have Professor van Pelt today, is that right?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, that right.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that the transcript is clear, that is him being interposed in order to be called by the Defendants and cross-examined because he has commitments elsewhere. Is it expected he will be finished in a day?

MR IRVING: I doubt it, my Lord. I think two days.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. So when will he resume? He cannot be here tomorrow, Mr Rampton, can he?

MR RAMPTON: He can tomorrow but not Thursday.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we should get rid of him.

MR RAMPTON: If he can be done in two days, so much the better; if he cannot, he can come back on Friday.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to keep within reasonable bounds so I hope he will be finished within two days.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving's original estimate for him was three days. We asked what the estimate was. But, if it is two days, so much the better. If we have Friday a blank, as it were, then I shall continue cross-examining Mr Irving on Friday, I suppose.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: Then on Monday, Professor McDonald, and I do not know about Dr Fox, it may be him too. I do not know. That is in Mr Irving's hands.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot remember who Professor McDonald is.

MR IRVING: My expert witness.

MR RAMPTON: He is a social scientist, I think.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: How long is he going to be, just so that you are communicating about timing?

MR IRVING: I shall be submitting various documents to him with your Lordship's permission, my Lord, and it depends on whether Mr Rampton wishes to cross-examine him or not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He may not know the answer to that until he knows in more detail what he is going to say.

MR RAMPTON: I have a pretty good idea what he is going to say. The answer is if I cross-examine him at all, it will be quite shortly, I expect.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And then Fox?

MR RAMPTON: I do not know about Mr Fox. That is Mr Irving's witness.

MR IRVING: I expect Dr Fox will be half a day, my Lord, if that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.

MR RAMPTON: Then, my Lord, I hope I will be able to complete any outstanding issues arising out of Evans and the political scientists in the remainder of the four days of

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that week.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: I would be disappointed if I do not. I would hope I would be quicker than that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I would too. I think you have been through the most -- if I can use the word "laborious" without giving offence -- laborious bit.

MR RAMPTON: No, not laborious, perhaps the most important issues anyway.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Distorting history on Hitler.

MR RAMPTON: Distorting Hitler and Holocaust denial by means of Auschwitz denial.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So at the end of those four days, will that complete your cross-examination?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, it should do. As your Lordship knows, Reichskristallnacht is a bit fiddly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is quite convoluted.

MR RAMPTON: It is convoluted, exactly, so it may take a bit of time. Then, my Lord, we are now being speculative, in a sense, provisional, we would hope to start our evidence, excluding Professor van Pelt, on Monday, whatever it is of February, with possibly Professor Browning, possibly Dr Longerich, possibly Professor Evans, I do not know. Then I think perhaps the only political scientists we will call as a witness is Funke, the German. But that is a little bit in the future.

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I have put question marks against Levin and Eatwell and also against the Russian witness Tarasov because, quite frankly, having regard to the witness statement of Mr Irving's witness, the journalist, Peter Miller, I do not think Mr Tarasov has anything to add at all.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will say again that I think in relation to the Moscow diaries some sort of accommodation might be possible.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I do wish to make certain fundamental observations about the way the case is being conducted so far. I do not know if this is the appropriate moment.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think now is probably the moment for you to do that, unless you would rather reserve it for later?

MR IRVING: It is brief but to the point, my Lord. I am the Claimant in this action. This is my action, and I spent yesterday evening indulging in a little bit of light reading in the Civil Procedure Rules and my eye alighted on Lord Woolf's wise words towards the beginning of the introduction to the Rules which states that all steps have to be taken to ensure complete equity between the parties.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. That is my major function.

MR IRVING: It is a major departure from the old system. He said, he identified a range of defects in the existing civil justice system, the third of which was that it was too unequal in that there was a lack of equality between

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the powerful, wealthy litigant and the under-resourced litigant. My Lord, I am up against a powerful, wealthy litigant here, as evidenced by the fact that I stand here alone and on the other side of your Lordship's court are sometimes between 20 and 40 experts, researchers, solicitors, learned counsel, arrayed against me ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That had not escaped my notice.

MR IRVING: --- funded by the most enormous resources. Somehow, the sequence of events has got reversed. Your Lordship will remember that when we embarked on this two and a half weeks ago, we were looking at the prospect of holding off Auschwitz until towards the end of the discussions, but now Auschwitz has somehow come right up in front. Their witnesses have been interspersed in the middle of my presentation of the case. It now turns out that Professor Robert Jan van Pelt is here at this time purely because it is convenient to him because he is going on a Holocaust junket to Stockholm on Thursday together with the Second Defendant. I do not see why I should be inconvenienced in this way, my Lord. I do not, frankly, understand why your Lordship is tolerating it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Partly, Mr Irving, because you have not until now raised any objection. We have been discussing for some days now when Dr Van Pelt might give his evidence.

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I had understood (and I will be corrected by reference to the transcript if I am wrong about this) that you had not raised any objection and, indeed, I had understood you to concur with his being interposed at this stage.

MR IRVING: But the inevitable result is, my Lord, that this means that Auschwitz has been brought right to the front of this case purely for the convenience of one of the witnesses who intends to fly to Stockholm on this lavish junket Thursday for which the whole court is having to hold its breath for a day.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am a bit puzzled, Mr Irving, about this protest because you were cross-examined for the whole of yesterday about Auschwitz, so there is no question of Auschwitz having suddenly being brought to the forefront of the case. It was brought to the forefront of the case when cross-examination was embarked on yesterday morning.

MR IRVING: The inevitable result, of course, has been that it has driven a cart and horses right through my preparations for the major part of the case. Also, it has had the unfortunate effect of putting in front of your Lordship and, of course, the public the entire opposition case, so to speak, without my being able to lead all the evidence which I intended to lead in advance which is the normal way that it should have been conducted.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course that is right. In a case like this where it is judge alone, in a way one is able to be more

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accommodating with witnesses' personal difficulties.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The problem I have now is that you are telling me really I think for the first time that you are unhappy about Professor van Pelt being interposed, but he is here. We have been proceeding on the basis that he would be interposed without any dissent from you. I am rather reluctant, unless you want to press it, to change the schedule.

MR IRVING: Well, my Lord, it is obviously too late to change the schedule now, but I wish to draw your attention purely to the disadvantageous effect it has on me. Your Lordship has now been presented with all the hostile evidence in advance of the evidence which I would normally put first as the Claimant.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a bit unreal. I have read all the expert reports before the case started, as you know and as Mr Rampton knows. So I knew very well what the case on Auschwitz against you is going to be.

MR IRVING: With the utmost respect, my Lord, of course, a lot of our case depends upon the spin that various parties put on words ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course that is true.

MR IRVING: --- and on documents which your Lordship has not even seen yet. The only way that I can introduce those documents, I believe, is by putting them to the expert

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witnesses. These are documents which your Lordship has not even seen yet because, as far as I can see, the bundles do not include them. This is the unfortunate result. But I shall try to prepare it as well as can I over the next few days, my Lord, but I cannot understand why we are being held hostage to this convention in Stockholm. It has nothing to do with this court. It appears to be the only reason why Professor van Pelt was come over at the beginning of the case rather than in the proper timing.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must say I would have listened with great sympathy to the point you are now making if you had made it a bit earlier. Your problem is you have left it really until the very last minute to raise this objection.

MR IRVING: If learned counsel had informed us that the only reason why Professor van Pelt was over at this end of the month rather than in the proper period was for his own personal convenience in order that he can combine it with this junket in Stockholm, then ----

MR RAMPTON: That is just not right.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me hear Mr Rampton on this, Mr Irving. What is the reason?

MR RAMPTON: It has always been my intention to start my cross-examination with Auschwitz. Because Mr Irving fell short in chief -- I know not why -- I started cross-examining earlier than I had expected. His original

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estimate for his own case was two to three weeks. I, therefore, got Professor van Pelt over here for Monday, 24th January, when I was expecting to start my whole cross-examination with Auschwitz. Stockholm, as it happened, came later, his appointment at Stockholm. Incidentally, I add that the First Defendant, Professor Lipstadt, is not going to Stockholm, despite what Mr Irving says. That is why Professor van Pelt is here. I then read, if I may, what Mr Irving said on Tuesday, 11th January, at the beginning of this case. This is page 5: "I am perfectly prepared to have Professor van Pelt come over in the middle of whatever else is going on and we can take him as a separate entirety. He is certainly an extremely interesting witness to be heard".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I had got the impression that this was all happening by agreement really on both sides.

MR RAMPTON: Yes. There cannot be any question about it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we are going to have Professor van Pelt now for you to cross-examine. But one thing I have said before now and I say it again, I am very conscious of the burden that is being placed upon you. It must be gigantic. I think it is going to get more difficult when you are cross-examining. If you want more time when the court is not sitting so that you have got the ability to prepare and so on, all you have to do is ask and within

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reason I will try to accommodate you.

MR IRVING: That would have been the request that I would have ultimately submitted, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, when you have one expert after another, as Mr Rampton was forecasting will happen in about 10 days' time, that is when I think your difficulties will be at their worst. If then you want time between the witnesses to prepare yourself, then again within reason I will try to accommodate you.

MR IRVING: My Lord, as to my remarks about the Second Defendant also going to Stockholm, that was based on the Swedish government's announcement that she was attending.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you have been told by Mr Rampton that she is not.

MR IRVING: She is listed in all the agenda at the conference as a speaker.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, I think it is unlikely she will be going in view of what Mr Rampton has said.

MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. They are the only submissions I had to make on that. I wished really to draw to your Lordship's attention, that is all, that things have been taken out of my hands in an unsatisfactory way.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, my function is to make sure that you are not disadvantaged because you have no lawyers. I cannot provide you with a back up team, obviously, but I am trying to look after your interests, as judges always

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do with litigants in person. But so far, I do not believe you have suffered any disadvantage.

MR IRVING: Well, only inasmuch as I have not had the opportunity to put before your Lordship the documents on which I rely as yet which would be the normal sequence of events.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You could have done that before the trial started.

MR IRVING: Well, my Lord, the bundles had been prepared entirely by the Defence. They are not agreed bundles. They have large lacunae in them, as your Lordship will see when the time comes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you knew that you had the opportunity to put before the court any bundles of documents that you wanted to rely on.

MR IRVING: This is precisely what we were working on when the Defendants came charging in with a reversal of the timetable, my Lord. This is basically the problem, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Right now you want to take me through some documents, do you, before Professor van Pelt goes into the witness box?

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I, first of all, add one thing before that discussion is closed? It is this. I think I need to say it because inevitably sometimes Mr Irving has attempted to use the court as a public platform. True it is there is an inequality of resources; true also it is,

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however, that my clients are defending a suit brought by Mr Irving. It reminds one of the old French proverb: "These animals are very naughty. They defend themselves when they are attacked".

MR IRVING: That proverb cuts both ways, Mr Rampton.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, that is enough of that. Now, do you want to do this now? Is that what you are proposing?

MR IRVING: Do I wish to?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Address me on these documents you handed in this morning?

MR IRVING: One or two of them, my Lord. The others are there purely for the purposes of being in your Lordship's hands when we start with Professor van Pelt.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just so we get things done in the right way, I think you ought to go back into the witness box just to deal with whatever evidence you want to give arising out of yesterday. It is just so we know which hat you are wearing, advocate or witness. It is difficult, but I think it is quite important to keep an eye on the difference.

MR IRVING, recalled.

Examined by the Court

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right?

THE WITNESS: The first document, my Lord, is the one headed "Institute for Historical Review". This is a letter written by the Institute for Historical Review to

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Professor Gerald Fleming who is an acknowledged expert on the Holocaust.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. And I draw your Lordship's attention purely to the paragraph on the second page which I printed in bold face, the last paragraph. Your Lordship was enquiring about what other reports after the Leuchter report continued to support that contention, and here is a very useful summary of them: "Rudolf reached essentially the same conclusion as had American gas chamber specialist, Fred Leuchter, in his 1988 forensic investigation of the allied gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau. You may also be aware that as a result of Leuchter's findings, the Institute of Forensic Research in Cracow conducted a partial investigation and that its forensic analysis, given in a confidential September 1990 report, corroborated Leuchter's findings". Your Lordship may remember that I referred to the fact ---

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you did.

MR IRVING: --- that the Auschwitz authority had locked it away. "This report was published in the summer 1991 Journal of Historical Review. Moreover, Austrian engineer, Walter Lüftl, who was, in fact, the President of the Austrian Federation of Engineers, explicitly endorsed Leuchter's findings in the detailed March 1992 report published in the winter 1992 to 1993

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Journal, and the German engineer, Wolfgang Schuster, and the American research chemist, William Linsky, reached conclusions similar to those of Leuchter and Rudolf". More of that is relevant, but that is the only paragraph that I would just draw to your Lordship's attention to bear out the fact that Leuchter was not one lone voice crying in the wilderness.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are taking a relaxed view of the rules about evidence, but this is Mr Weber of the Institute for Historical Review telling Professor Fleming what he says these various individuals concluded.

A. Yes.

Q. Are you going to show me the Rudolf report in due course?

A. The Rudolf report ----

Q. Not now.

A. I should have handed it to your Lordship.

Q. Do not worry now, but this is rather third hand, is it not? That is what I am saying.

A. It is, my Lord, but the Rudolf report is the glossy blue publication which I brought in about a dozen copies this morning, and through an oversight it obviously was not listed in discovery for which I do apologise. That was an omission.

Q. Yes, that is that?

A. My Lord, the only other document I draw to your Lordship's attention is the one headed top left, it is an invoice

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Vedag, V-E-D-A-G.

Q. Yes, I noticed that.

A. And it is the United Cardboard Factory of Silesia. It is an invoice to Auschwitz crematorium -- I am sorry, it is an invoice to the central construction office in Auschwitz, 28th July, an invoice concerning the Auschwitz crematorium for ----

Q. "Entwesungsanlage"?

A. Just the first two or three lines inside the box on the invoice shows that it is for sealing work, S-E-A-L-I-N-G work, carried out for the Entwesungsanlage -- E-N-T ----

Q. And that is the delousing chamber?

A. Disinfestation chamber, or disinfestation installation, strictly speaking. I mean, we may have an interesting discussion with Professor van Pelt about precisely what that was, but certainly it tends to bear out my contention of one of the uses to which that building was being put. My Lord, that is all I wish to say from the witness box.

Q. Just let me get that. Thank you very much. I think you can go back and resume your role as ----

MR RAMPTON: Could I just ask one question before he does, my Lord?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Arising out of that?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is only an administrative question.

Cross-examined by MR RAMPTON

Q. I want to know, Mr Irving, whether you received yesterday

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an invoice, I think it is, or something of that nature -- I cannot find it at the moment -- dated 13th April 1943 from Topf to the Zentralbauleitung at Auschwitz concerning [German - document not provided].

A. I received just a loose document faxed through to me sometime in the evening, yes.

Q. You did receive it? That is all I wanted to know.

A. Yes.

Q. Good. Thank you very much.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That does not tell me very much.

MR RAMPTON: Has your Lordship not got it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, if I have, I am not aware of having it.

A. Can I be shown a copy now in case there is any comment I wish to make on it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are an awful lot of spare bits of paper flowing around. It seems extraordinary when ----

MR RAMPTON: This arose simply because yesterday for the first time Mr Irving brought to our attention a document dated 20th August 1943 which on its second page, as we now see, is a bill from Topf, or an invoice, it mentions "Entwesungsanlage", as does the piece of paper that he has just given to us and to your Lordship. There is, in fact, another piece of paper which is very likely related to it which as its last item but one mentions two Topf Entwesungsöfen ----

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A. Yes.

Q. --- for crematorium II. Those are delousing ovens?

A. Yes.

Q. I make no comment beyond that. I will hand that up to your Lordship because I am sure your Lordship will need it in due course. It goes with the other two documents from Mr Irving's side.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall I put it in J as well because I am really anxious we keep an eye -- I seem to have the Rudolf report at the same time.

A. That is the Rudolf report, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: It might be convenient to have them in chronological order. That document I have just handed up will be the first. The second would be the one that Mr Irving has just handed in dated 28th July. The last would be the document we got last night, if we did, which is the invoice from Topf.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is the only questions, so would you mind going back.

(The witness stood down)

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you are going to call your witness?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, I am. I preface calling him with this request, perhaps is the right word. I have the impression, and so do others, that the question of the various Polish reports may be a little bit confused.

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The Rudolf report only came up yesterday. Professor van Pelt has not read the Rudolf report. He does not have a copy with him, but he does know something about it. What I propose to do is to ask just a very few questions in chief just to get that question straight, if your Lordship permits it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. Anything, as it were, that has surfaced since he did his written report, I think that is entirely proper.

MR RAMPTON: This arises out of two things, one the Rudolf report mentioned for the first time yesterday, and second what I perceive to have been a bit of a confusion about the sequence of the Polish reports because there were, in fact, three.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. The one we have had is ----

MR RAMPTON: That is 1945.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- the 1945 zinc cover.

MR RAMPTON: That is right, and the bag of hair.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But there is Dawidowski as well?

MR RAMPTON: No . My belief is -- no, I am cautious about this -- that the 1945 report was done at the request of Dawidowski. Then in 1990 there is a preliminary Markievitch report which we do not have and then in 1994 there is what one might call the final Markievitch report, a part of which is in that first volume of the bundle I handed in yesterday.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Mr Irving, I think that is right, that Mr Rampton should be able just to ask these supplementary questions about a new aspect of the case.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I also make this request. Professor van Pelt has a family Bible which has been in his family since before the war. May he swear on that?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course.

PROFESSOR VAN PELT, sworn.

Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.

MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, are your full names Robert Jan van Pelt?

A. Yes.

Q. Have you made a report for the purposes of this case?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. Are you content that that report, save for some few questions which I shall ask you in a moment, shall stand as your evidence-in-chief in this case?

A. Yes, I am content.

Q. Do you confirm its accuracy so far as it contains statements of fact?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. And, so far as it contains expressions of opinion, do you confirm that those expressions of opinion are fair?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Professor van Pelt, there is only one thing I want to ask you about. You heard what it was. Do you remember

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yesterday that there was some discussion of the various Polish investigations of the fabric at Auschwitz and Birkenau?

A. Yes, I remember.

Q. My Lord, may I lead on this? It is going to be much quicker.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure we had the evidence yesterday.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, we did. The first report was done in late 1945?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. That we looked at yesterday, you remember, and that was the one which said that it had found traces of hydrogen cyanide in the zinc ventilation covers from crematorium II?

A. Yes.

Q. You will have to say yes because you are recorded, you see. And also in a 25 and a half kilogram bag of hair?

A. Yes.

Q. Where was that hair found?

A. The hair was found in Canada I.

Q. Explain to his Lordship what Canada I is, will you?

A. Canada I was a part of the camp located halfway between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II in what is now an industrial area, where property of people who had been admitted to the camp or had been gassed was kept for some time and it was sorted and prepared for transport to the Reichs. Unlike Canada II, which was located between the crematoria

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2, 3, 4 and 5, Canada I was not destroyed at the evacuation of the camp.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So, just to be blunt about it, what is your inference as to how the cyanide came to be in the human hair?

A. I think the logical conclusion is that the people from whom the hair came had been killed with cyanide.

MR RAMPTON: And the hair removed after death?

A. And the hair removed afterwards, yes.

Q. Now, if we can whiz forward to the early 90s, was there a second Polish report done which we do not have?

A. It is a little difficult to say if it is a real report since it was actually never completed or endorsed, as far as I know. What happened was that, more or less within months after Leuchter did his investigation in Auschwitz, the conservator at Auschwitz, Mr Smerk, together with the director decided to do their own investigation and they got help from people from the forensic laboratory in Cracow, the Jan Sehn Institute, and a small investigation more or less on the model of the Leuchter investigation was done, which did confirm the Leuchter report in so far that it found high cyanide traces in the delousing rooms BW 5A and I think BW 5B. And much lower quantities I think in crematoria 2 or 3.

Q. Pause there, just so that it is all clear. BW 5A is in Birkenau, in what became the women's camp?

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A. Yes. BW 5A means Bauwerk 5A; it is a delousing installation in what is generally known as the women's camp in Birkenau.

Q. Where is BW 5B?

A. It is an opposite location slightly to the West of BW 5A. They are around 50 metres apart.

Q. Is it right that those are both brick built buildings?

A. These are both brick buildings.

Q. Do they have their roofs on them or not?

A. They have their roofs on them, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What puzzles me about this is that one of the documents Mr Irving just handed in says that this further Polish or Auschwitz investigation has been published in the summer 1991 Journal of Historical Review.

A. Yes. The history of that report was kind of a rude wake-up call for the people at Auschwitz museum, because what happened was that, one way or another, the document, which had not been finalised as far as I know, was leaked to people of the Institute of Historical Review and then immediately published rather triumphantly as a Polish investigation and/or sister Leuchter investigation. It was this kind of experience which then made both the people at the museum and the people at the Jansen institute to decide to move with greater care in the future.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, pause there. Are you also familiar with

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something called the Rudolf report?

A. I am vaguely familiar with it. I have not read it in its entirety.

Q. How long is it?

A. 20 pages, something like that.

Q. Would you just have a look at this document? (Same handed) like your Lordship, I have not seen this before.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just trying to work out what qualifications Dr Rudolf has.

MR IRVING: My Lord, perhaps I can help you there.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is a chemist.

MR IRVING: Rudolf is a chemist at the Max Bank Institute in Germany, which is one most prestigious research foundations. While he was there, he had a university degree in chemistry, he was working for his doctorate, he was halted in full tracks when he supplied an expertise for a court action in Germany, which resulted in demands from a certain community in Germany that he should be instantly dismissed, which was resisted by the Max Bank Institute. He was then dismissed, which brought to an end his chances of getting a doctorate.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful, thank you.

MR RAMPTON: Would you look on the inside so that we can see what this is? I can tell you, Professor van Pelt, that this is not the Rudolf report. Can you look on the inside page? At the bottom there is a line and immediately under

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the line we see this: "A German language edition of the complete Rudolf report, 120 A4 pages on gloss paper etc. etc., is now available for £8". If that be right, Professor van Pelt, we can be confident, can we not, that this is not the Rudolf report?

A. I presume so, if this disclaimer is placed at the copyright page.

Q. Tell me this. What do you know of Rudolf's conclusions concerning the residues, if any, of hydrogen cyanide in whatever compounds it was he tested for in, first of all, BW 5A -- if he went there? Did he?

A. I think he went there, yes.

Q. What did he found in BW 5A?

A. I would be hesitant to give any kind of definite opinion on this because it is a very long time ago that I read a gloss on the Rudolf report, but I think that he found that in substance the Leuchter results were substantiated by Rudolf, which means a high level of Prussian blue.

Q. So he tested for Prussian blue?

A. Yes.

Q. He found high residues in the delousing facility?

A. Yes.

Q. What did he find in the gas chambers at the crematoria? Did he go to crematoria 2 and 3?

A. Yes, I think so.

Q. What did he find there?

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A. As far as I remember, but again I have not consulted this report for a long time or the gloss on it, he did not find much there.

Q. Right. You have your report there, I think, that you made for this case?

A. My report, yes.

Q. I am not going to read out any great amount of this. Could you turn to page 545?

A. I have done so.

Q. Thank you. This is the passage, is it not, in which you discuss, first of all, what I might call the Markievitch prototype or provisional report, and then the Markievitch main report which I think came in 1994?

A. Yes.

Q. That has been published, has it?

A. Yes.

Q. In how many languages?

A. It was published in Polish and in English.

Q. I think you already told us that he Markievitch, or rather his team, went back and redid it, because they were unhappy about the first rather hurried or botched attempt. Is that right?

A. That were quite unhappy, yes, and they did the tests again.

Q. What substances or compounds did they test for? Did they test for Prussian blue?

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A. No. I am not a chemist so forgive me if I am not going to give great detail on this. What I do know is that they found that the Prussian blue test was problematic and this was ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I interrupt you just to make sure I am understanding? The Prussian blue is simply the physical manifestation of a chemical reaction caused by the acid in the cyanide, is that right?

A. With iron. It is an iron compound and ultimately it is one of the things which can occur when you, for example, have hydrogen cyanide being applied to iron, but also other reactions can follow.

MR RAMPTON: Can you just pause there? I want to take it slowly so that we are quite sure we understand so far as you are able to tell us because, as you say, you are not a chemist, what the reasons may be for what we are going to see in a moment. Can you turn to page 552? Page 553 I hope is the opposite page. Is it?

A. No, but I will be able to turn the page.

Q. We are lucky because we have them on facing pages. On the left-hand side of your report you have put a table with crematorium II at the top. Yes?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. Where did that come from?

A. I made the tables on the basis of the English language edition of the 1994 Markievitch report. The only change

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I made was that I basically formatted all the tables in the same way because in the Markievitch report they were formatted differently. So I wanted that the way the information was going to be presented was going to be identical throughout the tables.

Q. Do you have the complete original of the Markievitch report here if anybody should want to look at it?

A. I have one copy here.

Q. Just put it down for the moment, please?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, before plunging into these tables, would it be helpful for me to know what exactly it was that the revised Markievitch report decided or concluded?

MR RAMPTON: That it concluded?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, all right. Will you tell his Lordship, Professor van Pelt, broadly speaking, what its findings were by reference, first, please to the crematoria and then to the delousing?

A. There were three parts to the Markievitch report. First of all, there was a test of the crematoria, was there really cyanide compound in the walls of the crematoria? Second of all, were there cyanide compounds in the delousing building BW 5A and the delousing building which was used in Auschwitz I? Then finally there was a test done with a control sample to see if in the building of

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which they knew there had been no Zyklon B, and the idea was would there be a kind of random cyanide content in the walls, which was one of the claims which had been made about the cyanide contents in the crematoria.

Q. Pause there, and take that last feature first. What did they find when they looked in a place where there was neither gassing of humans nor of lice?

A. Negative.

Q. Nothing?

A. Nothing.

Q. So that eliminates that. Where they were aware that it has been suggested that you could find it anywhere because at one stage during the typhus epidemic in 1942 the whole camp had been fumigated?

A. I think so, yes. I do not remember exactly.

Q. What conclusion did they draw about that, do you know?

A. About these buildings?

Q. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is pretty obvious. A single fumigation does not leave any cyanide presence.

MR RAMPTON: That is what Markievitch said in his conclusion. Then if you look now at, first of all, we are going back to 551, and notice, please, that all these concentrations are given in micrograms per kilogram of cyanide compound, is that right?

A. Yes.

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Q. Is what is measured in micrograms the actual cyanide content of the samples?

A. I think that it is actually the combination. It is not the cyanide content, but I think the whole, whatever it has bonded with.

Q. If you look at the second table on page 551, it concerns crematorium I. Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. And only in one column, under sample 20 -- my Lord, the first block in the table is the number of the sample, and the second block is the readings beside B, the second row of blocks. Only in one, number 20, does one find significant quantities of cyanide.

A. Yes.

Q. Then look over the page, please and look, please, at 553 first. Now, samples 53 to 55, you tell us, were taken from blue staining on the outside of the building?

A. Yes.

Q. And two of those, 53A and 55, have relatively high readings, particularly number 55?

A. Yes.

Q. From 57 and 58 the readings, you tell us, are taken from the plaster, from dark blue stains on the inner side of the wall; in the building, in other words?

A. Yes.

Q. And both of those have relatively high readings, do they

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not, particularly sample 57?

A. Yes.

Q. 840, 792, 840. Then, please, look at the table on page 552 and look at sample 25 which comes from crematorium II. In the text on page 550 you tell us that samples 13 to 52 were taken from places which served as homicidal gas chambers?

A. Yes.

Q. So that includes the reading in the first table of crematorium I, and it includes the readings under crematorium II, does it not?

A. Yes.

Q. The first sample 25 under crematorium II, has relatively high readings, does it not?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. Not quite as high as sample 57 from the delousing building, but higher, I think, than any others in these tables?

A. Yes.

Q. 30 and 31 also have what is medium high readings?

A. Yes.

Q. Crematorium III, nothing of any significance, yes?

A. Yes, I agree.

Q. Crematorium IV, samples 41 and 46, particularly 41 again ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is crematorium V.

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MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is 4 and 5. In 4 again relatively high readings?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you have an explanation? I know you are not a chemist, but do you have an explanation, perhaps supplied to you by others, why it is that in these gas chamber remains Professor Markievitch's team found readings of cyanide which are almost as great as the Prussian blue readings in the delousing building?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He could read out page 555 of his report, could he not, on that?

A. May I correct you there? Actually he did not test on Prussian blue. You just said the readings of Prussian blue.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the analysis of the material as opposed to the colour?

A. Yes. But he did not test Prussian blue because there are problems with Prussian blue analysis in this.

MR RAMPTON: You say he did not test Prussian blue?

A. Markievitch did not test Prussian blue.

Q. Did not test Prussian blue? Do you know why not?

A. One of the things which is very problematic, and again I am not speaking as a chemist, but I am speaking more or less on the basis of knowledge I have glossed from others. It seems that there is a problem in the formation of Prussian blue which relates to one of the main things,

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the acidity of the environment.

Q. Wait a minute, take it in stages. None of us is a chemist. At least I am certainly not, I do not know about his Lordship, and I do not think Mr Irving is. Prussian blue is a compound?

A. Yes.

Q. A combination produced by a reaction between hydrogen cyanide and iron?

A. Yes.

Q. Is that right?

A. That is right.

Q. Now, what is the difference between Prussian blue then and other substances which react with hydrogen cyanide? Sorry, it is a bad question. You were starting to talk about the acidity being a problem. What do you mean by that?

A. The pH level of the environment.

Q. Yes?

A. Prussian blue seems only to be formed in very, very specific conditions, in which a number of environmental factors need to be present. It seems to be that, in order for Prussian blue to be formed, one needs to have a PH level which is higher than 7.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we cut this short? The PH level varied according to which chamber you were looking at, is that right?

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MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord.

A. Very particularly in the case of the gas chambers the PH level would have been much lower than 7, because of the carbon dioxide being brought into the environment by people who are brought into the gas chambers.

Q. So an acidity or a PH lower than about 6, high acidity, yes?

A. Yes.

Q. Is this that you are telling us interferes in such a way with the chemistry that the hydrogen cyanide does not react with iron?

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Going back to what you were being asked about, namely the conclusions to be drawn from the readings which Mr Rampton has just taken you through, am I right, just to short circuit it again, that at page 555 of your report you in a few sentences summarise what the conclusion of Markievitch report was?

A. Yes, I do, and the conclusion was that it was a positive proof that the spaces in the crematoria they had tested had been used with Zyklon B, hydrogen cyanide had been brought in those rooms, and I would like to make maybe one kind of caveat to this whole report, and this is if you allow me?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course.

A. It is a problem which relates to crematoria 4 and 5, and

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this is a problem which goes back to the Leuchter report. It goes back to any tests which have been done. That is the fact that the crematoria 4 and 5 which are above ground buildings, brick buildings on a concrete slab were completely demolished at the end of the war, and that all the bricks were brought to a big heap behind crematorium V, and that whatever we see there now has been reconstructed with those bricks, but that these bricks in some way come from a random pile. So it is very difficult to know which brick was originally where.

MR RAMPTON: So the reading on page 552 on crematoria 4 and 5, the relatively high readings, numbers 41 and 46, there is no way of being able to say that those pieces of fabric that are now in what is supposed to be the gas chambers were there originally?

A. No, there is no way one can say that. So I would say that any investigation of crematoria 4 or 5 on residual hydrogen content would be, as far as I am concerned, a useless exercise.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we concentrate on the other crematoria?

A. Yes.

MR RAMPTON: But the same problem does not beset the samples taken from crematorium II. Thank you very much, Professor van Pelt. My Lord, before cross-examination starts, I should have done this earlier, your Lordship has I hope

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a supplemental or supplementary report from Professor van Pelt?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember that there was one.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving certainly has it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just wondering where I put it.

MR RAMPTON: It has to do with a very limited topic. It has to do with B Zyklon deliveries to Auschwitz. What I will do, if your Lordship does not mind, is hand up a file with it in, which I have marked "van Pelt supplementary".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have it, although I am a bit puzzled I have not put it in the existing file.

MR RAMPTON: That there is not much room is perhaps one reason.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That could be true. It suggests to me that I perhaps have not had it.

MR RAMPTON: I am not going to refer to it now.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have seen this supplemental report?

MR IRVING: I have indeed, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, also in the file, which Mr Irving does not know about but I have a copy for him now, is a document produced in consequence of a critique that Mr Irving published on his web site of Professor van Pelt's book about Auschwitz. I suggested that it would be helpful for me if Professor van Pelt did answer to that critique which he has recently done and I have got, in case he was cross-examined on the basis of the critique.

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It emerged from the questions that I asked Mr Irving yesterday that that indeed is going to be so. It seems to me, since this is quite detailed, that everybody therefore should have a copy.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well maybe. I just am a little concerned that every day we are generating more files. We have enough files to keep most people happy for a long time.

MR RAMPTON: It is not something I am suggesting anybody should read from beginning to end, but Professor van Pelt may want, as experts do, make reference to it for the detail.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we slot it into the same file.

MR RAMPTON: I have done it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.

MR RAMPTON: I have called it "van Pelt supplementary 2 and 3".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to put the Rudolf report into J as well.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, that must be right. Miss Rogers thinks it is about ten.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to keep a track on it, actually.

Cross-examined by MR IRVING

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: My Lord, may I propose to proceed as follows with the cross-examination? That I briefly cross-examine the witness as to credit; I would then like to test your Lordship's patience by showing the court for about ten minutes a video film of Professor van Pelt visiting the

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Auschwitz site, which will serve a double purpose. There are things which he says during that video and it will also give us a sense of what the site looks like now.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Certainly. I am afraid I have not noticed the video, but certainly do.

MR IRVING: I will then proceed after that to the cross examination. Professor van Pelt, you are a Dutch citizen or Canadian citizen now?

A. I am a Dutch citizen.

Q. May I, first of all, pardon my rudeness, welcome you to our country and say what a great pleasure I had in reading your book on Auschwitz -- for what it is worth, it is one of the few books that I have read from cover to cover and it was a book that I found very difficult to put down. I do not know how much of the book was written by you and I do not know how much of the book was written by your partner, Deborah Dwork. However, a number of questions arise from the book and, after we have seen the video, I would ask you just in one paragraph to give the court a brief history of Auschwitz in the way you have done in the book so admirably on the basis of documentation. You studied at the University of Leyden, am I correct?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And you are now Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario?

A. No. The issue of my appointment is kind of confusing.

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I am in the Department of Architecture and hence I am officially a Professor of Architecture. Your title as Professor depends on the department you are in. However, I teach in what we call the Cultural History stream, so normally, in order to prevent confusion in ordinary usage, I would call myself Professor of Cultural History because, both in my background, my PhD and my teaching duties, I teach cultural history in the architectural school. However, when I was advised about the way I had to create my curriculum vitae for this proceeding, I was told that I had been to be extremely precise in the legal sense of what I was, so again I put in Professor of Architecture.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you are really a cultural historian?

A. I am really a cultural historian.

MR IRVING: This is a point of some substance, my Lord. We need to know precisely what your qualifications are to offer your expertise to the court. I do not mean this in the least sense in a derogatory manner because, as I say, I have read both your book and your report with the utmost interest. However, we need to know what your areas of expertise actually are. In Britain, of course, we have the Royal Institute of British Architects. Are you familiar with the fact that it is illegal in England to call yourself an architect unless you are registered with the RIBA?

A. That is in most countries like that, yes, I know.

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Q. In Holland, the equivalent is the Bond van Nederlandse Architecten, am I correct? I am sorry about my pronunciation.

A. Yes, Bond van Nederlandse Architecten.

Q. Which is the rough equivalent of the RIBA?

A. Yes.

Q. Am I right in saying that you are not registered with the Bond van Nederlandse Architecten?

A. I have never had any reason to do so since I never studied in an architectural school.

Q. So you cannot legally pretend to be an architect, if I can put it like that?

A. No, I could be prosecuted.

Q. You could be prosecuted?

A. Yes.

Q. Rather like Mr Leuchter was prosecuted in Massachusetts for pretending to be an engineer?

A. Yes.

Q. You can probably see the thrust of this particular question. In other words, your expertise, as an architect, is the same as Mr Leuchter's expertise was as an engineer?

A. I do not really know. I have been teaching in architecture school now since 1984. I have taught design courses, specially in small architecture schools one needs to chip in wherever one does. I have been on

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architectural juries and quick sessions, mostly on a weekly, bi-weekly, kind of frequency. I did ----

Q. You have never learned architecture? You have never studied architecture at university? You have never taken a degree in architecture?

A. I do not have a degree in it, but I have been confronted with the architectural practice and, apart from that, I have worked for various architects, one of them, Sir Dennis Leston, here in England, when he was designing the Synagogue in Jerusalem. I have worked with Jack Diamond in Toronto. So I have been in architectural offices very often and other practices.

Q. And, of course, you are now advising the present Auschwitz authorities on the reconstruction, if I can put it like that, of the Auschwitz site?

A. I was advising them, yes.

Q. You are no longer doing so. Very well. So if I am called a pseudo historian, then you are a pseudo architect, if I can put it like that?

A. Yes, except I have never claimed to be either an architect or a pseudo architect.

Q. Except that you are a Professor of architecture, you announce you are a Professor architecture, you leave people with the impression that you are an expert on architecture, and yet you have never studied it and you have never qualified and you are not registered as such?

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A. I must say that I probably would prefer to be called a Professor of cultural history, but the fact of the matter is that the university has given me an appointment as Professor of architecture. So ----

Q. But you are not giving evidence here on the culture of Auschwitz; you are giving evidence on the architecture of Auschwitz.

A. I am going to evidence, I hope, on the history of Auschwitz, and the architectural documents are a very important historical source. I think we both agree on that. I think, as an historian, you can talk about various forms of evidence and the architectural documents is one of these forms of evidence.

Q. I do not mean these questions in the least sense as a put down, but I think it is important to draw his Lordship's attention to the fact that your qualifications as an architect are, in fact, no greater or lesser than mine?

A. I agree that my formal qualifications are exactly the same as yours.

Q. So when you look at light switches or architectural drawings or blue prints, as you call them, you are no better qualified than I am?

A. No, but I would say, your Lordship, that I have been doing this for the past maybe 15 years, and so there is a certain practical experience, I would say, which may be is going to be relevant.

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Q. Yes. There is only one other very general question on the question of credit which I would ask you before we settle back and watch the 10 minute video. Your report is unusual in one respect, and your Lordship may have noticed it, it has a copyright line on page 2. In other words, you claim copyright in this document. Now, remembering you are on oath, would you tell the court if you have any intention eventually of publishing this?

A. At the moment I do not have. I think it is an unpublishable document.

Q. I disagree. It is set out in chapter form. It has literary quotations at the beginning of every chapter, quotations from Mediaeval poets and other authors in a way you do not normally find in an expert report, I would have thought. I would have thought it was designed explicitly for publication at some future date?

A. No. When the occasion would arise, I would be very pleased if some of the things could be used, but I have learned to respect a big difference, for example, between a Ph.D. dissertation and a book and there is a big difference between an expert report, and I understand this report as a means for an intelligent judge to make up his mind about Auschwitz who has never been there, which is quite a difference for when one writes a book for the general public.

Q. So why the copyright line?

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A. Oh, it is a habit of mine which I do whenever I submit any manuscript to anyone, and maybe this is inappropriate in this case. None of the lawyers has told me that it was inappropriate, so the copyright line remained there.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can have an argument about the copyright after this case is over.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the reason I ask this, of course, if the witness was intending to publish this work, and he has now said on oath he has no intention of publishing it, then I would ask him the following question. (To the witness): If you were to write a report which came out with the conclusion that crematorium No. II had never been used as a homicidal gas chamber, that Auschwitz was not a factory of death, that Leuchter was right, David Irving was right, whatever, what would the commercial prospects of that be as compared with the commercial prospects of the report that you have actually written? Would they be greater or less?

A. It is difficult to say. It seems to be that the book buying habits of the people who are believing that the gas chambers were not used for homicidal purposes seems to have been much more active than for the people who believed that they were used for homicidal purposes. After all, I think that you sell more books than I sell of my Auschwitz books.

Q. Not currently I do not.

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A. I mean, it is very difficult to say this. Certainly, controversy seems to have served you well in the past in a number of books. I have been, I believe, in some way less controversial and controversy certainly helps sales figures in general, so I probably put some more books.

Q. Very well. I will take your statement that you have no intention of publishing this ever, as you have now told the court. My Lord ----

A. May I just come back to this? I said "in this form".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite briefly, if you would.

A. Sorry?

Q. Quite briefly, if you would.

A. No, I said "in this form". I did not -- I did not write this with publication in mind as such.

MR IRVING: Yes. Very well. My Lord if your Lordship will turn to the transcript ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Play the video?

MR IRVING: --- which I provide your Lordship of the video, just so you can confirm what is actually said.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me find it. Is that one of the documents you have handed in.

MR IRVING: It is called Mr Truth -- Mr Death. There are two excerpts that I wish to play. (The video was played)

MR IRVING: My Lord, this is Fred Leuchter. My Lord, I think this is not the part I wanted in fact. I would speed the

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court along, I think, if I ask the witness if he remembers what was said.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not your fault. Shall we turn it off?

MR IRVING: Yes. If I could borrow a transcript from someone? Professor van Pelt, you remember appearing in a video which is part of a film now called "Mr Death". Do you remember the filming of that project?

A. Yes.

Q. When exactly was that filmed? A year ago? Half a year ago?

A. We went to Auschwitz in April 1998 -- was it 1998? 1999, I think. 1999.

Q. '98?

A. 1999. No, 1998. I am sorry.

Q. Do you remember saying: "Auschwitz is like the Holy of Holies. I have prepared for years to go there, and to have a fool come in, coming completely unprepared, it is sacrilege, somebody who walks into the Holy of Holies and doesn't give a damn"?

A. Yes, I remember saying that.

Q. This was a reference to Mr Leuchter, was it not?

A. Yes, it was a reference to Mr Leuchter.

MR RAMPTON: Should not the witness have a transcript like everybody else?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you feel the need for a transcript?

A. No, I remember the -- it is useful, but I remember this.

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MR RAMPTON: Except that some pages down the road we come to some German, so it might be helpful.

A. Thank you.

MR IRVING: You were deeply moved to visit the actual location where these atrocities had occurred?

A. More than moved. I was frightened. I ----

Q. Ghosts of the dead were still all around?

A. No, I do not believe in ghosts and I have never seen in ghosts in Auschwitz, but it is an awesome place in many ways, and it is also an awesome responsibility one takes upon oneself when one starts to engage this place as an historian. For many years I felt I was not up to that task. It was only after very careful preparation that I finally decided to go there and to start work in Auschwitz. As many things in life, it became easier to work on it as I was there as you actually start confronting what the place is.

Q. Can I ask you about a part on the next page of the transcript, the page beginning with the words, "Very little left", "to suddenly have in that room that concentration of evidence, you are sitting in the archives, to actually hold the stamps in your hand which you see on the drawings". Am I right in understanding that the Auschwitz archives have the original wartime rubber stamps still?

A. Yes, there is a box with all the rubber stamps.

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Q. You yourself took one of the stamps and you put it on an ink pad and tried it out on one of your note pads?

A. Yes.

Q. You had exactly the same stamp that had been used by architects like Dejaco and Ertl and the rest?

A. Yes, I made a copy of that stamp.

Q. You could have had a lot of fun with one of those stamps, could you not, if you had so chosen?

A. If one wants to falsify evidence, one could have fun, yes, but...

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that suggestion is being made, is it?

MR IRVING: Well, my Lord ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was light-hearted or was it not?

MR IRVING: --- I wanted to leave that lingering suspicion in your Lordship's mind.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it is better to come out with it if you are going to make that allegation.

MR IRVING: We referred to one document yesterday, my Lord, the one on cremation rate capacities, and I strongly implied that this document is suspect.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not originating from Professor van Pelt?

MR IRVING: Good Lord, no. For heaven's sake, no. I deeply regret that that impression should have been given.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I just wanted to clarify that.

MR IRVING: Of course not. It is just that if those rubber

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stamps had been in a Polish archive which was Communist until quite recently, in the Auschwitz State Museum, rattling around in a cardboard box ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Somebody could do it.

MR IRVING: --- somebody could have done it. Rubber stamps played a great part in the falsification of the Demjanjuk identity card, and the final revealing of the falsification. (To the witness): You continue to say at the bottom of that paragraph: "This is like holding the weapon of destruction in my hand, the gun that killed the victim, except these blue prints did not kill one person. They ultimately allowed for the killing of millions." Are you saying that several million people were killed in Auschwitz or was this just a loose turn of phrase?

A. This would be a loose turn of phrase. I believe that Dr Piper's assessment that round a million people were killed in Auschwitz is probably the most probable number.

Q. So when you talk about millions, it is not a deliberate manipulation or a perverse distortion of figures. It is just a loose approximation because you are speaking without a script?

A. No. First of all, I am speaking without a script. I mean, you know exactly how Errol Morris interviews people because you were interviewed in the same way and also appear in the same movie. I was talking without of any of blue prints there. I was talking in studio for

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three or four days. There is, however, one point which I would like to make, and that when I came to the archive and saw for the first time these blueprints, I had very clearly in my mind a scene from Shoah where the great historian Raul Hilberg holds in his hand at that moment a railway table of transports to Treblinka, and he says something to the effect that it was looking at these documents that, in fact, you were holding the murder weapon in your hand; and I certainly, when I was talking to Errol and when I was looking at these blue prints, it was really amazing how Errol brought back to me that that moment, that first moment, of seeing the blue prints, that I was thinking this is part of that whole administrative system. It is not only blue prints for Auschwitz, but it is basically part of a State sponsored project to kill Jews. So when I used to use the word "millions" here, I would be quite happy to ultimately defend it in that larger context of a bureaucracy at work to ultimately dispose of people.

Q. Professor van Pelt, would you agree that it is the duty of historians to remain completely unemotional when he is looking at any object or artefact or a document, and to interpret it as unemotionally and neutrally as he can?

A. I think that one's duty is to be unemotional, to be objective, but one's duty is also, I think, to remain human in the exercise. I think, and this is what I just

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told you before, my Lord, that I prepared for Auschwitz because ultimately I went there as a human being and I was frightened to go there and I was frightened for the responsibility. To actually face great historical questions when they concern, as one would say, maybe the alleged murder of many people, then I think that, of course, if one is completely without emotion as one looks at these documents, then one would be a machine and probably not a human being and hence not a historian.

Q. Very well. We can establish very clearly that you are an historian with feelings (and I think we would all like to be that), but do you not agree it is important as an historian to be able to put his feelings in one compartment and his objectivity in another and not allow his objectivity to become coloured by his feelings?

A. I agree that when one analyses a document that one should, indeed, be objective, that one should forget one's feelings, but when one goes home in the evening and goes back to a little room in the town to Vochest(?) where I had rented a room, then, of course, the feelings will come back.

Q. I agree. Now if I can turn just to the last page but one of the transcript. I am afraid they are not numbered, but it is the paragraph beginning with the 01, "Van Pelt then says"?

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A. Sorry, the last 0, yes.

Q. I quote: "Crematorium II", and at this moment when you are saying this, you are actually standing on the collapsed roof of crematorium II?

A. I am standing there?

Q. On the roof, yes. You are crouching on it by a hole. It is visible in the video.

A. I do not think I am standing on the roof at this -- it was Leuchter who was crouching at the hole, not me.

Q. Very well. You say: "In any case, crematorium II is the most [something] of Auschwitz. In the 2500 square feet of this one room", and you are pointing downwards, "more people lost their lives than in any other place on this planet. 500,000 people were killed. If you would draw a map of human suffering, if you create a geography of atrocities, this would be the absolute centre." That is a reference to crematorium II and you are standing on the roof of Leichenkeller No. 1?

A. It is a reference to crematorium II, but I am actually not in the picture. It is Fred Leuchter standing on the roof of Leichenkeller 1.

Q. But you are speaking yourself?

A. But I am speaking. This was taped in the studio and there is no image of me actually in the whole movie near crematorium II. The only -- there are only two parts in the movie where I am actually seen in Birkenau, apart

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from, I think -- no, BW 51 was cut, that is, I look over the undressing room of crematorium III at one moment and I am seen in the ruins of crematorium (v), and that is it.

Q. Professor, just so that we can be completely clear about this and the record can be clear, you are describing crematorium II as being the place where 500,000 people were killed or ----

A. Yes.

Q. --- give or take a few numbers.

A. Yes.

Q. And that this was the centre of the atrocity?

A. Yes.

Q. So if I am to concentrate a large part of my investigation in this cross-examination on that one building and, in fact, on Leichenkeller 1, the one arm of the crematorium, this is not entirely unjustified if I am trying to establish that the factories of death did not exist as such?

A. No. I think that that the obvious building to challenge would be crematorium II.

Q. My Lord, may I show the witness one or two of these photographs so we can identify what we are talking about?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course.

MR IRVING: It will probably help your Lordship also. This, first of all, is quite a large photograph showing the whole Auschwitz region. If I hold it up, could you point,

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please, to Birkenau?

A. Birkenau is right here.

Q. Birkenau, so his Lordship can also see it, is the oblong. The witness recognises the oblong in the centre of the map.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, will you pause a second because this is quite helpful to me because there is a map somewhere in Professor van Pelt's?

A. It is in my report, yes.

Q. I would quite like to mark it up because the geography is not all that clear in my mind.

MR RAMPTON: It may be your Lordship will do even better with the aerial photographs taken by the Allies in 1944 which are at tab 2 of K2.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.

MR RAMPTON: They go everywhere from a bird's eye view, as it were, of the whole complex right through to the detail of the roof of Leichenkellers 2 and 3.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Mr Rampton. That is very helpful.

MR IRVING: Would you now point to Auschwitz I, what is also called the "Stammlager"?

A. Auschwitz I is a kind of more, the Stammlager, the compound which is surrounded by barbed wired is right here, but here we see an extension of the Stammlager called the "Schutzhaftlagererweiterung". It is under

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construction. Here are various factories, including Canada 1, which belong to the Stammlager but which are outside the barbed wire compound.

Q. Am I holding the map the right way up, Professor? Which way is north, can you remember?

A. North is right here, so it should go like that.

Q. Right. Finally, the big IG Monowitz plant?

A. It is more or less where your hand -- yes, more or less where your hand is.

Q. Is that not the IG Monowitz plant here?

A. No, no, this is the Schutzhaftlager -- where your hand is, more or less where your hand is, that is where the Monowitz...

Q. So Monowitz is down here somewhere?

A. Yes, down there. Sorry, that will be kind of confusing for the record, but there is another photo in the binder which actually also shows the plant.

Q. In fact, if one looks closely at this photograph, one can see a cluster of bombs descending from the American aircraft that took the photograph. We now get much closer, if I may?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can you give me the reference in the Leuchter (sic) report for the aerial photographs?

MR RAMPTON: In the Leuchter report?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, in the van Pelt report.

MR RAMPTON: To what, my Lord?

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: The aerial photographs because I have marked up one of them and I cannot actually find the -- rather than start again with another one.

MR RAMPTON: It is towards the end, I think.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I thought it was. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me, Mr Irving, just tracking this down?

MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship were to start at 370?

A. Page 49 does show the plant just referred to.

MR IRVING: Very well. These two buildings down here, the T shaped buildings, they are the two crematoria II and III, is that correct?

A. That is correct. May I make one kind of caveat as far as the numbering is concerned? There are documents where these crematoria called I and II, so sometimes they are called II and III, sometimes I and II. It depends if one crematorium I in the Stammlager is included in the numeral.

Q. We have here, my Lord, a photograph taken relatively recently, within the last few months, from a helicopter showing the site as it now is of these two crematoria, the ruins of the two crematoria. You can see the outline of the two T shaped buildings like they are mirror images of each other. Crematorium II, is that correct?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Crematorium III, and they are largely in ruins. What is this path that has been laid here? Was that a wartime

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path, Professor?

A. No, that is a recent path that has just been created because many of the tourists go first to the former women's camp and then they go through a new bridge and a new opening through the barbed wire fence which surrounds crematorium II to crematorium II.

Q. While we are just looking at this map, you mentioned the word "tourist". Is Auschwitz a major tourist attraction, therefore?

A. At the moment, the tourism has been reduced in past years because it used to be that the Polish Government insisted that all Polish school children would go there. That has changed. So I think that around 500,000 people per year come there.

Q. Whilst we are holding this particular map, can you identify what these two circular objects are?

A. These are part of a sewage treatment plant.

Q. A water purification plant?

A. Yes -- no, a sewage treatment plant.

Q. Well, it is the same thing. It converts sewage into drinkable water?

A. No. This was not meant to convert sewage into drinkable water. This was created, and we see another one right here, and there was another one started right there, because there were complaints in 1942 when the Birkenau population started to increase by the authorities in the

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province of Upper Silesia that the camp was throwing its untreated sewage in the Sola River. So what happened was that the building inspectors of the county said, "If you want to continue to run this concentration camp, you have to take care that you throw cleaned water or the clean sewage into the river".

Q. While we are dealing with the water, this is crematorium II, this is the Leichenkeller No. 1 -- we will come back to that in a minute on a larger photograph -- am I correct?

A. Yes.

Q. This is the water treatment plant?

A. It is a water treatment plant.

Q. If eight kilograms of cyanide were put into the water system there, of that particular building, it would not do the water treatment plant any good?

A. Sorry, this is a sewage treatment plant.

Q. Yes, but if it was to be established that there was a link between that building and the sewage treatment plant, the drainage of the one building went into the sewage treatment plant, then this would create a serious problem for the environment, eight kilograms on a regular basis of hydrogen cyanide being fed ----

A. I cannot comment on how much cyanide -- how quickly cyanide would be diluted. Certainly, a sewage treatment plant is taking many kinds of refuse in its

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operation. One would have to talk to a chemist what ultimately the kind of danger of the dilution of hydrogen cyanide would be, but we must not forget that most of the hydrogen cyanide in the Leichenkeller 1 was used as a gas and was evacuated through a chimney and not through the floor.

Q. Very well. But we have heard that it is a heavier than air gas?

A. No. It is slightly lighter. It is not much lighter. It rises slowly, but there was a large ventilation system in the crematorium and there was an exhaust pipe on top of the crematorium through which the air in the Leichenkeller 1 or gas chamber could be evacuated.

Q. While we are looking at this particular map, will you show us, please, the railroad spur which ends between the two crematorium?

A. We see the end of the railroad spur right there.

Q. Which is the platform, therefore, where the notorious selections are said to have taken place?

A. This is the end of the platform where the selections took place.

Q. So they would be marched off then -- what happened to the people who arrived by train on that railroad platform?

A. Yes.

Q. What happened to them?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was a question.

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A. A selection took place at a particular point halfway, that platform, and this is, we are now talking about a situation in 1944, since the spur was only completed in 1944 for the Hungarian action, and the most usual operation was that the selection took place halfway, that platform, in which men and women were lined up in four rows. One row of women to the east and a line of women to the west of that point, and two lines of men, again one to the east and one to the west, and right in the centre selection took place and then people were either sent into the camp or sent to the crematorium.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: My impression is that a similar, the spur may not have been there, selection process operated during 1943 as well, did it not?

A. The section process in 1943 was different since it happened at the so-called Judenrampe. A Judenrampe was, basically, an unloading point along the main railway corridor. I can point it out on this aerial photo. This is the main railway corridor connecting, basically, Vienna and there is one going to Berlin here and Cracow and Warsaw; and exactly at this point, at this point, there are still the remains also of a Rampe, a platform, where the trains with Jews would be unloaded and then a selection took place here. Then people who were admitted to the camp walked to the camp and the people who were selected to die, if they still could walk, would walk, but

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otherwise were taken on trucks to the gas chambers of the crematoria or the gas chambers of bunker 1 and 2.

MR IRVING: May I ask you some questions about that selection process now, please? On what basis was the selection for life or death conducted?

A. It would depend really on the situation. The policies of the Germans seem to have been different at different times. To give one example, as a general rule, let us first say for a general rule, one could say that, as far as gentiles was concerned, and gentiles were sent to Auschwitz, there was no selection on arrival. For example, Poles, a large group of Polish children came to Auschwitz from the Zamosc area and were admitted to the camp, and you can go to the present women's camp and there are barracks specially for children with paintings and the bits of school, and so on.

Q. At what age does one cease to be a child?

A. In Auschwitz, I would say around 12 or 13 years.

Q. What age was Anne Frank when she arrived in Auschwitz?

A. Oh, she would have been 15.

Q. About 15?

A. Yes.

Q. Yes. Did she fall ill in Auschwitz?

A. I do not think so. I think she fell ill when she came to Bergen-Belsen.

Q. Did any members of her family fall in Auschwitz and where

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they housed in a hospital in Auschwitz, her father or her sister, Margot?

A. Her mother fell ill and ultimately died, and her father fell ill and was admitted to the Lazarett.

Q. So these were six Jews, unemployable six Jews, who were housed in the hospital in Auschwitz?

A. Yes, but again one -- as I started to give my original presentation, my Lord, and maybe I can finish it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, we will come back to Anne Frank if you want to. You have dealt with ----

A. I would like ----

Q. He was dealing with the various ways in which the selection process occurred. If it was non-Jews, then there was no selection process. That is as far as you have got.

A. There was no selection process. If it were Jews, then it depends on which town we are speaking of and what is the kind of transport that arrived. For example, in early 1942 transports arrived of Jews who were sent to Auschwitz under the umbrella of what is called the Operation Schmelt which was a local work programme for Jews in Upper Silesia. There the selection took place at the factories and people who could not work any more in the Operation Schmelt were sent to Jews and were killed there without selection. So there was no selection there in Auschwitz.

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Selection had happened somewhere else. In general, what happened was that transports arrived and sometimes transport arrived in Auschwitz where again the selection had taken place somewhere else. For example, the Slovak transport which arrived in 1942, most of the early Slovak transports were Jews who had already been selected back in Slovakia in transits camps as being fit for work in Auschwitz. No selection was applied to these transports. Then at a certain moment transports start to arrive where no selection takes place at the point of departure, and then the selection will take place in Auschwitz, where again the situation can be different. Sometimes all children and all old people are selected to die and younger people are selected to live, but again there are exceptions.

MR IRVING: May I interrupt you at this point and ask you what is the documentary basis for these remarks you have been making over the last two or three minutes? Is it all eyewitness evidence or are there any documents at all in the captured archives to support this, any document whatsoever?

A. The main source of this is eyewitness evidence. There are documents which talk about that, that transport arrives and only so many arbeitsfähige Juden have been admitted to the camp, which means Jews were fit to work. It does not

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specify the fate of the others.

Q. So far as the documents go, we are left in suspense as to what happens to them and we rely entirely on the eyewitness evidence of those left behind, so to speak, as to what happened to their loved, nearest and dearest?

A. It is obvious that, when a transport of, let us say, 2,000 Jews arrived and only 900 or 600 people are committed to camp, of course the question is raised what happens to the other people. Then at that moment I think eyewitness testimony, both from Jews and Germans, becomes quite valid as a historical source.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You get the disparity between those two figures from the numbers given on the documents relating to the trains that were arriving at Auschwitz?

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: So, in other words, we are reliant entirely on the eyewitness testimony?

A. We do not rely entirely. We know at a certain movement that so many people arrived, so many people were considered fit for work and then, of course, there are the registration numbers. There is a great disparity between what we know about the number of transports arrived there and the number of Jews who worked at Auschwitz, and the number of people who were registered there, because, with two exceptions again, registration happened consecutively, which means a number that had been given out once was not

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given out a second time.

Q. What is the total number of registration numbers that we know about in Auschwitz, in round figures?

A. Around 400,000.

Q. So around 400,000 of these hapless people arrived in Auschwitz, were given registration numbers and officially existed, and the rest had no registration numbers and they just were disposed of in some way. Is that what you are saying?

A. Yes.

Q. Yes, but as to how they were disposed of, alas, the archives tell us nothing, neither the Moscow archives nor the Polish archives. We are reliant on eyewitness testimony and on our own common sense?

A. And at a certain moment a careful investigation of the machinery of murder, in this case the crematoria.

Q. Which comes back to crematorium number 2 effectively?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the Professor wants to add something.

A. I would like maybe to complete my account of selection. There are one or two other categories, I think, that I need to mention before we close on this.

MR IRVING: We have not closed on it. We are going to come back to it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him finish with the various categorisations.

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A. I must mention that, for example, in 1943 and 1944 a number of Jews transports arrived from Theresienstadt where none of these people were selected, with children and old people were housed in what is called a Theresienstadt lager in Auschwitz, so Jews' children at that time were admitted to Auschwitz, and also old people. That was part of a camouflage action by the SS because they feared, or they expected, a Red Cross inspection of Theresienstadt and wanted to be able to account for the people who had been sent to Auschwitz.

MR IRVING: What is your documentary basis for making that statement?

A. The documentary basis?

Q. For making the statement that this transport arrived from Theresienstadt, that it was properly housed in Auschwitz and the Theresienstadt camp, and that the reason for that was to prepare camouflage against the Red Cross inspection?

A. I have to rely here on the historians of Auschwitz. I have not studied the history of the Theresienstadt Jews myself. I rely here on people like Adler, who has written the definitive history of the Theresienstadt ghetto. I have not done any specific research into the history of Theresienstadt lager.

Q. While we are talking about the histories of Auschwitz, do you agree that there is a high degree of politicisation of

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the writing of history about camps like Auschwitz. If I can put it like that?

A. To be very honest, I have always been surprised how little politicisation there has been. In general, I must say that, with the exception of the number of victims, I find Jan Sehn's history still remarkably useful. You know Jan Sehn wrote his history in 1945/46. I have been very impressed in general by the professionalism of the historians at Auschwitz, and in general I must say that for the people who have looked seriously at this camp I do not have too many complaints. Now, it is of course true that new source material has become available and new historical questions have been asked. I think one of the reasons that you were so interested in my book was because I introduced a lot of new kind of evidence about the history of the camp. But in general I must say that I think that most people have acted very responsibly, and with very few kinds of political prejudices in relation to the history of Auschwitz.

Q. The site of Auschwitz has not really changed very much since the end of World War II, apart from the barracks being torn down and recycled. Can you explain to the court, please, why it is that in the very earliest references to Auschwitz, published by the Russians after the capture of the camp in January 1945, there is no reference whatsoever to the discovery of gas chambers, but

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any number of references to other atrocities being committed there?

A. I would like to comment on the document, but I would like it see it in front of me.

Q. Very well.

A. I think that, if we are going to interpret in this case an historical source, we should go carefully and slowly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair.

MR IRVING: That is quite fair, my Lord, and tomorrow, with your Lordship's permission, I will bring the translation of the appropriate account. Can you explain also why the New York Times, in its account published in April 1945, referred to 5 million people having been exterminated in the camp? This is at the other end of the extreme.

A. I would like to see it before I comment.

Q. Very well.

A. I can do that now if you give it to me or I can do it later.

Q. I have another New York Times item here. New York Times, November 25th 1947, I will be happy to show it to you. I will read it out. It is a very brief paragraph: "44 Nazi officials of the notorious Auschwitz extermination camp accused of responsibility for the killing of 300,000 prisoners from a dozen European countries went on trial today before the Supreme National Tribunal." Can you explain the figure of 300,000 in 1947,

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with the Auschwitz officials being put on trial in Krakow in Poland by the Polish authorities?

A. My Lord, this is a number which also has come up in a newsreel of the trial which was shown in German cinemas. The 300,000 quite literally is, as it is mentioned here, prisoners from a dozen European countries. It was a number which, until the late 1980s, was also in the Auschwitz museum. It only referred to the actual people who had been imprisoned in the camp.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And registered?

A. And registered. It did not refer to the people who had not been registered.

MR IRVING: Well,, Professor, would you not agree that the court is entitled to find that a rather extraordinary explanation? On the one hand, we are told that 4 million people had been killed in Auschwitz, and yet these people were being put on trial for the murder of 300,000. There is no mention of the other 4 million in round figures.

A. The facts are the facts, Mr Irving. I have studied this issue of the 300,000 where this number came from. It was a number that refers to registered prisoners. I do not know why the Polish court decided at the certain moment to make that issue the issue on which they were going to prosecute the people who were accused in Auschwitz.

Q. Without any reference to the larger figure which was being set aside. I can appreciate that, in the case of a

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murderer who has been accused of murdering 20 people, a court may decide to prosecute just on one murder, but at least they would mention the fact that 19 other cases were taken into consideration.

A. Yes, but, my Lord, I have made a very careful study of the trial of the architects of Auschwitz. Maybe I can answer by just telling you in short that, during the trial of the architect Dejaco in Vienna in 1972, the prosecution ultimately tried to have him condemned for murder of one inmate on a building site. Now maybe you can explain to us or to someone else why this would be a proper way to proceed, but they ultimately did not want to take him, to actually challenge his statement that he had nothing do with the blue prints, that they had been made in Vienna. They just executed him, but an incredible amount of testimony was heard on this particular incident in which he would have drowned in a large bucket of water, this particular inmate who was not pulling his weight on the building site.

Q. Can I interrupt you at this point and say that it is true that both Defendants were acquitted, were they not?

A. Ertl was not officially acquitted, but his status remained kind of unclear.

Q. I am not an expert on Austrian law, but certainly under English law they could have then re-prosecuted him on any one of the other murders. They could have had him

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back up before the Beak but yet they did not. He was set free. Both Defendants were set free and never prosecuted again although they were the architects whose names appear on those blue prints which were in your hands in Auschwitz. Is this not a remarkable comment on the state of the evidence?

A. I think it is a remarkable comment on the way the Austrian court operated. I have all the files in my possession. Certainly after I came out of months of studying the files in the courtroom there, I must say that I lost much of my respect at least for Austrian justice. They had all the documentation from Auschwitz. They had all the blue prints. They had all the documents which had been under discussion, for example, in my expert report with two or three exceptions only. They got material from Moscow for this trial. They had the blue prints there and they were never consulted.

Q. And yet they were acquitted. So it was a perverse result, in other words?

A. It was a very perverse result and I think that, if indeed an expert witness had been brought in to look at those documents carefully, they would not have been acquitted.

Q. Very well. You had these documents before you at the time you wrote your book "1270 to the present"?

A. Which documents?

Q. The Ertl trial document. I had the Ertl trial documents.

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Q. Were you aware of the 1947 figure of 300,000?

A. I was aware of that figure.

Q. And that the German newsreel in January 1948 again said that in the judgment passed on these 40 men, many of whom were hanged, they were hanged for the murder of 300,000 people in Auschwitz?

A. I did not know the newsreel.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The 300,000 were not grassed, presumably, if they were registered prisoners?

A. Some of them would have been gassed. Others would have been beaten to death. Some of them would have been killed with phenyl injections. People would have been shot and people maybe would have died from beatings or other causes.

MR IRVING: Did you make any reference to these lower figures at all in your book on Auschwitz?

A. No, I did not, because I think these figures were irrelevant.

Q. Were irrelevant?

A. Were irrelevant. The book ultimately presents a cumulative figure of all the deaths in Auschwitz, both of people who have died as a result of murder immediately after their arrival and of people who have died after having been registered in the camp.

Q. You are familiar, no doubt, with the book written by Professor Arno Mayer, "Why did the heavens not darken", in

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which this Professor of Princeton University, who was himself Jewish and who cannot be called a Holocaust denier presumably, said that most of the deaths at Auschwitz in his opinion were from what he called natural causes, and that a very small percentage had been criminally killed in the accepted sense. What is your response to that?

A. That I am very happy to discuss the exact statement of Professor Mayer if I have the text in front of me. I have referred to him in my expert report. If you are happy to deal with my excerpt in the expert report, I am happy to look for it, but I am not going to comment in general on what Professor Mayer said without having the text.

Q. So are you saying in other words that you think Mayer is wrong? He got it wrong?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think he is saying, I cannot comment on a document which is not in front of me. Unfortunately, it is not a document, it is a book.

MR IRVING: Do you not agree that I accurately precis-ed what he said?

A. I do not think you do that. I do not think this is accurate, what you said.

Q. That Arno Mayer said that, in his opinion, most of the deaths in Auschwitz were through natural causes rather than from criminal intent?

A. Again, I am not going to comment on this text. The question was, did you appropriately precis Mayer's

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argument? I do not think so. It is a rather long argument. I know it has been taken out of context many times, and Mayer's text has been taken as "in admission" that indeed Auschwitz was not an extermination camp.

Q. It is difficult to see how you can take that remark out of context. It seemed to be a very pithy summing up by him, which has been very widely quoted and caused much indignation, I agree, in the Jewish community. He may of course be totally wrong.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor van Pelt's position is again, I think, a fair one. If you want him to comment on what Mayer concluded, then he must have the right to look at the document.

MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. I will not delay the court by looking for that document now, but certainly we will refer to it ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to find the reference to it in Professor van Pelt.

MR RAMPTON: Page 590, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not where I would have expected.

A. It is at page 629, 620.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I assumed it was at the beginning.

A. It a little earlier also. It is actually in 89 that Mayer published his book. And so here, 594 and 592, all Mayer, 590. It starts at 590.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I think possibly I shall leave this until

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after the luncheon adjournment and come back with chapter and verse.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whichever you wish.

MR IRVING: Because we are rather drifting away from the actual camp site, which is the way I was hoping to take this cross-examination. If I may produce the photographs again, we had concentrated on crematorium number 2, where you said that 500,000 people (in round figures) had been killed by the Nazis in that one buildings, this you called the geographical centre of any map of atrocities, a very telling phrase. Would you tell the court what this little building is down there?

A. Yes. It seems to be a pump building.

Q. No. Would you accept from me that this is a coal bunker?

A. A coal bunker?

Q. Or coke bunker.

A. I thought you meant another one. This particular thing there?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

Q. That is a coke bunker. I have not got equipment here for measuring the size of that bunker, but it appears to be about 10 feet square, in other words a very small space.

A. It seems to be a larger to me from what I remember but, again, 10 feet, 13 feet square, whatever. It is not a very large bunker.

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Q. Not very large bunker for holding the fuel supplies for fuelling a mass incineration programme, I believe Mr Rampton would have called it, for incinerating hundreds of thousands of bodies?

A. May I remind you, Mr Irving, that also in the crematorium itself was a very large coke storage space right next to the incineration building.

Q. Yes, I am familiar with the position of that in the drawings of the building. Not very much larger than that little hut outside?

A. I think it will be probably possible to establish the size of that when we consult a plan, and I am happy to consult the plans in my trial bundle.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was there a coke bunker in each crematorium or just one?

A. Each crematorium has its own coke bunker, yes.

MR IRVING: It is also right to say that these crematoria were adapted to burn trash as well, the regular camp trash that came in?

A. The trash furnace in crematorium II was never installed. There was a trash furnace in crematorium III, largely used to burn identity papers of people, and there were no trash incinerators in 4 and 5.

Q. Very well. The last picture that I wish to show the court and the witness and ask a question on is this large picture. This is crematorium number 2. You can see the

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scale of it from the people standing down there, the tourists who arrived up that path, and this is Leichenkeller number 1, morgue number 1, on which we have now zeroed in, in other words.

A. Yes.

Q. Mortuary number 1?

A. Morgue number 1.

Q. Will you describe the condition of that building, that particular mortuary, which is the one that you pointed at and said 5 "00,000 people died here", or you also said "this is the instrument with which millions were killed".

A. We just saw the state of that room in more detail when we looked at the film clip. When we see Fred Leuchter measuring, together with his assistant, the size of the ruins, and there is my voice-over saying that Fred Leuchter is no Sherlock Holmes, we are actually looking at the site of the morgue 1 of crematorium II.

Q. Was this building destroyed by the Nazis or by the Russians, I think there is some dispute on this, at the end of World War II?

A. The evidence points to the fact that the Nazis destroyed this building in two phases, and specially morgue 1. First of all, that when the gassing ceased in late 1944 we have the testimony of Sonderkommandos and others that the gas chambers were dismantled, which means that the actual

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installation within the morgue number 1 and of crematorium II and number 3, which had been created to adapt this room into a gas chamber, was removed, and that later the shell of the room, so to speak, was destroyed by dynamiting. It was a very detailed account of one Sonderkommando, how they actually made holes in the columns. Dynamite is put in it and ultimately, in the case of crematorium II, all the columns collapsed, with the exception of one. In crematorium III they were more successful and virtually everything collapsed there. So what you have now in crematorium II is that we have the remains of a concrete roof, which is basically collapsed on the floor.

Q. It is pancaked downwards?

A. It is pancaked downwards. One column is still there and in some way it has folded over, that one column.

Q. So there are reinforced steel bars inside the roof?

A. Reinforced steel bars in the roof yes, and there is a hole right next to the column, and that is the hole through which Fred Leuchter climbed into that space at a certain moment. It is a very tiny space under that roof.

Q. When do you say this happened? In 1945?

A. The demolition of the gassing equipment happened in late 1944, November 44, and the ultimate demolition, the final demolition, of the crematoria happened in January 45.

MR IRVING: Just so that we can get this quite straight, the evidence for this is verbal evidence from a member of the

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Sonderkommando?

A. Yes. There are no construction documents about the demolition. Also, the construction office had been closed for some time.

Q. Are there any written orders from the camp commandant or from Liebehenschel or from some other official saying, I order that this building must be destroyed for whatever reason?

A. There are no records but I have to point out that the archive of the commandant, which was virtually systematically destroyed, began in that same period of the evacuation and that only by accident the Bauleitung papers survived because they were forgotten.

Q. I was about to come on to that, Professor. Is it not extraordinary that the Nazis in their ruthless efficiency would go round destroying buildings and removing incriminating equipment which might have helped us very much today in this courtroom otherwise, but at the same time they allowed the Red Army to capture the entire construction files without the slightest murmur?

A. There are reasons for that which have to do with first the fact that the construction office was closed at the end of 1944 but none of the architects any more dared to oversee the destruction of the archive. They have been drafted back into the SS to fight on the Eastern Front, which by then had more or less come to Auschwitz. Second of all,

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that the architecture office was at some distance from the camp itself and that there were two archives in the camp, one archive which was kept in the Kommandantur, where people were until the very end, people who could attend to the destruction of incriminating evidence, and then there was in the Bauleitungbaracke, which was at some distance and I can point it out on the air photo if you want, this second archive which had been bundled up and simply was forgotten.

Q. So the Nazis remembered to destroy the buildings and remembered to take out every nut and bolt which might have helped us today, but they allowed the Russians to capture all the incriminating paperwork, except that it is not very incriminating either?

A. I do not think that simply they allowed. I do not think that by early 1945, as the Russian Army was pushing through and Silesia was on the point of collapse, that the German Army was still very efficient or the SS in Auschwitz. I mean they were on the run and they were in a panic.

Q. A bit of panic and these things just got left behind?

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have a feel there is a suggestion lurking there and I want to try and put my finger on it. Are you suggesting that what the Russians captured were not authentic documents, or what the

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Russians had produced were not authentic documents?

MR IRVING: No, my Lord, totally the opposite. I am sorry I am being so frightfully obtuse in my cross-examination.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you are not. You are doing very well but I want to understand the suggestion.

MR IRVING: I am indebted to my Lord. The reason I am asking this is for two reasons. I am laying a bit of a trap, if I may put it like that, which will be sprung either before or after lunch.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Then I will not enquire any further.

MR IRVING: I wanted to bring to your Lordship's attention the detail that the incriminating equipment that had apparently been carefully dismantled, every nut and bolt, and yet they had allowed all these records to fall into Russian hands, which does seem odd.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I was wondering what the underlying suggestion is. You develop it after lunch.

MR IRVING: We have discovered in fact that the Nazis were in a blue funk and in a terrible panic and just anxious to get away. How far away? Was the Russian line stationary for sometime on the River Vistula?

A. The Russian offensive of either the second Ukrainian Front and the Russian Front started moving on 12th January.

Q. 12th January 1945, yes, in the early hours?

A. Until then it had been stationary. That is also one of the reasons that the Auschwitz camp remained from, let us

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say, November 1944 until that offensive began on 12th January in a kind of limbo state. Then, after that offensive started on 12th January, in fact the decision was taken, no document again but a decision was taken, to actually evacuate the camp population and to destroy the most incriminating parts of the crematorium.

Q. So how far away was the Russian front during that limbo period, in rough terms, 20 miles, 50 miles?

A. No. I think they were -- they were substantially east of Cracow still at the time.

Q. On the River Vistula that basically was not there -----

A. Yes -- no, no, but the River Vistula more to the east. At that time they would have been as south as Auschwitz. They would probably have been, I would say, 100/150 kilometres away.

Q. Very well. So we have narrowed it down to this building which has collapsed. The roof, as we see it in the air photographs, is in a mess. Beneath that roof we would have found all the equipment, bits and pieces, that would have been incriminating, but the Russians -- somebody blew up the building and it pancaked downwards, this roof, and for some reason the archaeologists have never gone in there to find out what is still there, have they?

A. No. People, I mean, Fred Leuchter went down there. I mean, it is on this tape.

Q. Hats off to Fred Leuchter, in other words ----

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A. But, I mean, which archaeologist, I mean, what kind of expedition are you looking at? I mean, I do not think that many archaeologists would have been particularly interested, given all the choices available in doing archaeology, in actually going down into that very small space under the roof to do their investigations there.

Q. Not only in this particular building, of course, there are many archaeological sites around the Auschwitz camp, I would have thought, which would have helped to solve a lot of questions. For example, mass graves, burning pits, which could have been investigated with modern archaeological means like proton magnetometers, something which would detect the pattern of burning, things like this. Has any investigation like that been conducted by the Polish or any other authorities?

A. As far as I know not.

Q. Yes. But investigations like that have been conducted at one or two other sites, though, have they not? I think recently at Treblinka or Majdanek?

A. At the moment very big investigations have been done in Belzec, and part of this is as a result of the transformation of Belzec, to create actually a monument in Belzec, and like many of these, you know, when, in fact, you are going to make a change to the site, you want to know, first of all, what the site is, and let us say in Rome, when you put up a new apartment building, you first

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send in the archaeologist to see what is below there. So Belzec is -- actually still very serious work is being done right now.

Q. Am I right in saying the investigations being done at Belzec are roughly into discovering the size of any mass graves.

A. They are finding large mass graves and I have not seen detailed results.

Q. Have they been able to quantify the size of the mass graves?

A. I have only this by hearsay, what the size of mass graves are. I mean, that these are large mass graves, I cannot further comment on it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But would investigating to find if there are any mass graves at Auschwitz cast light on the problem we have here, which is whether there were gas chambers because, as I understand it, if you have gas chambers and you have crematoria, you are not going to need mass graves. Indeed, that was one of the reasons why they were built in the first place.

MR IRVING: My Lord, if I may interrupt your Lordship, the victims of these mass liquidations, like the liquidation of the Hungarians in the spring of 1944, as I understand it, alleged to have been partly cremated in the equipment we see here and partly cremated in open burning pits or, alternatively, buried for a time and then dug up again and

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cremated subsequently. These alleged sites, would it be correct to say, Professor van Pelt, cannot be identified on any aerial photographs or have not been identified on any aerial photographers, large pits or mass graves?

A. I do not think that the right analysis has been done on air photographs. Certainly when you go to the site, when you go to what is called the field of ashes, you walk through it, you see it, you see the remains of large burning pits. So, I mean, and I can testify with some knowledge, I have been at that site and I have seen the remains of these enormous burning pits, and I have picked up remains at the site.

Q. What kind of remains?

A. Of burnt bodies.

Q. Of bodies?

A. Yes. I mean, I have picked up burned bones which, obviously, have in some way been reduced to ashes. This was in 1990. I went there with Mr Pressac. Mr Pressac showed me the site. We spent a lot of time at the site. I have been there many times since.

Q. Of course, when you operate a crematorium, they do not reduce the cadavers to pure ash, do they? They do generate bone as well as ash? Not many people know this, but they generate large lumps of bone which have to be pulverised or milled down?

A. Yes.

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Q. Was there a bone mill attached to these crematoria?

A. No. The Sonderkommando, they give in detail accounts of how they had to take out the parts of the body that were not reduced to ashes, and with either wooden or metal implements crushing them into pulp.

Q. These might very well be the remains that you found in the field of ashes?

A. The field of ashes is quite far away from the crematorium. I think it would have been very unlikely that people would have carried those things from the crematorium to the field of ashes. One of the problems is that there is a barbed wired fence in between the two places. There is also a very deep ditch between the places, and that would have been very unusual. Also, the pits themselves are visible. You see in the landscape actually that there is a cavity there.

Q. So what did they actually do with these remains, the bone fragments that came out of the crematoria that had been pulverised by the Sonderkommandos? There must have been very substantial quantities, tonnes and tonnes of them?

A. All the ashes -- again there was an exception to this general account I am going to give me now, but in general the ashes and the crushed bones were combined, and at regular intervals with a truck were brought to the Vistula River which is very close by. Actually, it is visible on the photos and it was dumped in the river.

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The exception is that at certain times the truck broke down, especially in the Hungarian action, that this was impossible to do; and then there have been occasions in which the ashes were actually dumped in one particular pond near crematorium IV. The other exception, and this is on the basis of eyewitness testimony -- again no documents -- is that in the winter sometimes the ashes were used to actually throw on the iced roads in the camp in order to make them more convenient for everyone.

Q. What is the evidence for that rather lurid story?

A. This is the evidence, eyewitness testimony, for example, of Mr Bacon who testified in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.

Q. He is, presumably, Jewish, therefore?

A. Yes.

Q. I am not suggesting that it makes him in any way unreliable, of course, but I am suggesting that possibly he may have derived advantage from giving that kind of testimony in Jerusalem in the Eichmann trial.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask a related question which I should have gathered the answer to but I do not know? Sonderkommando, were they all in inmates who were, as it were, put to work?

MR IRVING: I was going to come to that, my Lord. I was going to ask for identity of ----

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Were you? Can I not ask the question now just so I know the answer?

MR IRVING: Yes.

A. The Sonderkommando were prisoners, people selected either on arrival or maybe sometimes a little later from the general prisoner population, who were going to work in the crematoria. They were housed either in the crematoria, especially from '44 onwards, but originally also in the men's camp in a special kind of barrack which was isolated from the other barracks with their own courtyard, and these inmates, 1944, when four crematoria were in operation and a group of 800 inmates, so roughly 200 per crematorium, working in two shifts of 12 hours each, so it would be 100 people at any crematorium at any time, operated the crematoria and were, again on the basis of eyewitness testimony, at regular intervals these groups were renewed after sometime.

Q. That is a very complete answer. Would there be anyone who could be described as a Sonderkommando who was, in fact, a Nazi camp official?

A. No.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.

MR IRVING: These Sonderkommandos were all people who had been previously very endangered, of course, they were potential victims, and the story is that, as you hinted at the end, they were recycled, they were fed into the furnaces with

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their -- have I understood correctly what your innuendo was -- at the end of their period of usefulness they were disposed of?

A. Yes, I would just like to ask you, you used the word "previously", what you exactly ----

Q. Were they previously endangered? In other words, were they people who might otherwise have been exterminated, but they were given the option, "Do this job and you, like Scheherezade, you will continue to survive for a while"?

A. No. Actually, you know, I thank God every day I was never in Auschwitz, but, given the choice, if I was in the man's camp and given the opportunity to get the job of Sonderkommando, I would have tried to get out of it with any, whatever possibility because it was a very dangerous job.

Q. It was a kind of trustee, what we would call a trustee in prison?

A. No, it is not at all, Mr Irving. A Sonderkommando was a -- I mean, people knew what was happening in the crematoria. At a certain moment -- I mean, a recent book has been published by a researcher of the Yad Vashem. "We cried without tears" is the title, which is a quote from one of the Sonderkommando. This man has systematically started to interview surviving Sonderkommandos. In all these accounts you see that people were appointed Sonderkommandos without asked if they wanted to do this,

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and that many of them realised it was a sentence of death.

Q. Because?

A. And tried to get out of it.

Q. Because?

A. Because they knew that the reason they were appointed as Sonderkommandos, or they were selected as Sonderkommandos, was because the group which had been Sonderkommandos before had been eliminated.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but why did they eliminate them? Because they were able to bear witness?

A. Because they were able to bear witness and, yes, you do not want -- and also, I do not know, I do not know what happens, you know, we talk about Stockholm syndromes, and so on. I do not know at a certain moment what happens exactly between the SS and the Sonderkommandos in the crematoria but probably.

MR IRVING: A kind of symbiosis?

A. What kind of symbiosis did emerge within at a moment these communities which formed themselves in the crematoria.

Q. So we can be specific about what we are talking about here, call a spade a spade, would it be right to say that a large number of these Sonderkommando members were Jewish themselves?

A. By definition, they were Jewish.

Q. By definition, they were all Jewish?

A. Yes.

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Q. I did not appreciate that. So, in other words, all these eyewitnesses who were Sonderkommandos were Jewish, the ones who are telling these appalling accounts of what they saw?

A. Yes. If they are Jews and they have survived to bear witness, then these are Jews who bear witness, yes.

Q. They have done these horrible things. They have taken part in this appalling crime committed by the Nazis. They have been a participant in it, and this must have been a traumatic experience for them?

A. Primo Levi has written a masterful essay on the traumas of the Sonderkommandos in the book which he just published before he died. Yes, this was a very traumatic experience.

Q. And how can they live with their sense of guilt or shame, do you think? How would they try to resolve that in the years of their retirement, if they survived, as a large number, apparently, did?

A. I would refer you to Primo Levi's ----

Q. Yes. You appreciate the point I am trying to make, that there may be a tendency to romanticise, a tendency to pass the burden of guilt, a tendency to -- would you agree that that is so?

A. I am not a psychologist and I am not a chemist, so I can only at a certain moment state that, as an historian, as an historian, I am amazed by the way surviving

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Sonderkommando in different ways have been able to live up to their historical responsibility to bear detailed witness to what happened.

Q. Can we just be quite plain what we agree their tasks were, and then we can find out where we diverge? Their task was, basically, to handle the cadavers, the corpses, inside the crematorium, to rob them of the gold teeth and other precious artefacts, to cut off the hair and to feed the bodies into the furnaces?

A. No. I would like to be more precise than that. The Sonderkommandos had very, very particular, very circumscribed tasks. There were, for example, Sonderkommandos who only were running, basically, the household of the place where they were living. They did the "Stubendienst", it was called. There were in every barrack or, in this case, in the attic of the crematoria II, III and IV they were four Stubenälteste[?] and so on. These people were the Sonderkommando ----

Q. Actually in the building?

A. In the building. They lived in the building.

Q. With their own shower rooms and bathrooms and sleeping quarters?

A. Yes, they had beds. They were quite comfortable because they could make use of stuff which was left behind in the undressing room. So there were people in the

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Sonderkommandos who, in that sense, I mean -- I do not want to imagine what it is to live above the crematorium -- who actually were not involved in the operation of either of the gas chambers or the crematorium.

Q. They must have witnessed appalling scenes day after day?

A. They witnessed it and they heard about it from the other Sonderkommandos when they came home, so to speak, upstairs.

Q. And their less fortunate friends could say, "You are helping the Nazis with their Devil's deed"?

A. I have no idea what they could or could not say. I am not going to speculate on what they said. Let me -- may I finish the tasks of Sonderkommandos?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is one category, the ones who were doing the housework?

A. Yes, so, basically, the Sonderkommandos who are in the Stubendienst. Then there are Sonderkommandos who had to supervise the undressing of the victims. This was again a very particular task.

MR IRVING: Of the living victims?

A. Of the people who came to the undressing room. These were the people who had to maintain some kind of order in the undressing room, who had to help people with the undressing and they also had to gather the clothing, take care, of course, that pairs of shoes remain together and things like that, because if you have a mountain of shoes

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and they are all, you know, they are not tied together, it is going to be not very useful for the people back home in Germany.

Q. This is from their eyewitness evidence, right?

A. This is from eyewitness evidence, yes. We do not have any German document outlining the specific responsibilities of Sonderkommando.

Q. I have to keep on making that point quite plain. We are relying entirely on their word of what happened?

A. The word of Sonderkommandos and also of German officials. So we have Sonderkommandos who work in the undressing room and that is their task. Then there are Sonderkommandos who work in the gas chamber which means actually bringing people, helping people, to go into the gas chamber and then ----

Q. Well, actually ramming them in, basically?

A. Whatever, in the beginning, that does not, when the doors initially open, one does not have to do that -- and who removed the corpses from the gas chamber and who clean the gas chamber afterwards. That is a particular group of Sonderkommando. Then there are Sonderkommandos who operated the elevator which was the next -- in the case of crematorium II, we are now only talking about crematorium II because in crematorium IV and (v) the sequence is different.

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Q. While we are dealing with the elevator, did one man have to go into the elevator itself or was it operated from outside?

A. It was operated from the outside. We have the bills for the elevators. We know what the elevators were able to do.

Q. We will come back to the elevators?

A. Yes. So they operated the elevators which bring the corpses up to the incineration room. Then there was group of Sonderkommandos which are called the "dentists".

Q. Was the only access, while we are on the elevators, between the so-called gas chamber, which is this big building we see here, and the furnace room, this elevator? Would they otherwise have to go outside around the outside of the building carrying corpses?

A. There were stairs going up, but there was no internal connection between the basement level and the incineration room or the main floor of the crematorium.

Q. Rather an inconvenient layout?

A. Yes, it was inconvenient.

Q. Totally lacked ----

A. But it seemed to have worked very well for the Germans.

Q. A totally lacking system?

A. The system worked well, and I think I have pointed out in my book (and Mr Pressac has done it in his book) that crematorium II was originally not designed as an

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extermination plant, and so the Germans worked with what they had.

Q. Yes, but the Germans were constantly building new buildings, were they not, and you and I, we have probably never visited a slaughterhouse, I am glad to say -- am I right in suggesting you have not visited a slaughterhouse in your life? I certainly have not.

A. No, I have only read about it.

Q. Will you take it from me that a slaughterhouse is built all on one level, all on ground level, so that there are no ups and downs for obvious reasons?

A. I cannot comment on it. It would make a logical proposition, but I remember reading about the slaughterhouses in Chicago where actually things, the cows are moved through the air, but that is just a memory from a thing ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, you say crematorium II was not originally designed as a ----

A. Yes, and crematorium IV and (v) were and there everything is at the same level.

Q. --- killing chamber?

MR IRVING: The point I am making, my Lord, is if one is building a factory of death for a systematic killing of people and you are constantly erecting new buildings, it would not have been built in this extremely awkward way.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but this was conversion from another

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use. That is what Professor van Pelt is saying.

MR IRVING: I think your Lordship appreciates the point I am trying to make

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do.

THE WITNESS: May I add to this that the Germans were not constantly building other buildings. There was a general build stop in Germany from 1942 onwards. In fact, very little construction was being done in Birkenau. The two crematoria II and III, they are identical exactly for the reason that they could not get crematorium III built any otherwise since the building II had been approved for another site for ----

Q. Who applied the building stop? Was this the four year plan or?

A. The general, as relative to what has happening in the war, the only buildings which could be constructed in Germany from 1942 onwards were really buildings for the Wehrmacht, I mean for the Army or the armed forces, and the SS did not count on that at that moment under that general umbrella.

Q. So the factory was destroyed; it was not rebuilt?

A. And then there were buildings which had been destroyed by bombing.

Q. Yes, so ----

A. That was the other thing, and the Behelfsheime which means provisional housing for people, but, in general,

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there was a building stop. One of the reasons there are so many documents in the Auschwitz archives was because every building was by its very nature an exception which had to be approved at many different levels. So the SS had great difficulty to get anything built in Birkenau or Auschwitz during the war.

Q. And they could not say, "Hey, we are carrying out the Führer's orders here. This is the annihilation of millions of Jews that the Führer has personally ordered. We demand top priority. This is the main plank of the national and socialist programme", is what you are saying?

A. What I would like to say is that probably bureaucracy works in the same way in Germany in 1943 as it works anywhere else. If there is a general building stop -- I would like to imagine the situation where an SS man comes with your story to an official of the building department and what this German official will say to this man.

Q. Well, normally, when people mention the Führer's name, there will be a clicking of heels and "Jawohl" and they would get that priority?

A. Mr Irving, if you had read my book carefully, you would have read in the book that at a certain moment there was a number of low ranking civilians in the Upper Silesian planning office who threatened to close the camp in late 1942 because of building code violations. This is one of

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the reasons that the sewage treatment plant was built. So I think that the relation between bureaucrats at whatever level and at a certain moment the SS is a little bit more complex than you suggested.

Q. I think you are stretching the court's credulity if you suggest that a planning official in Upper Silesia could overrule the Führer of the Greater German Reich and Heinrich Himmler in their dedicated desire, which we are constantly being told by the Defence, Hitler had ordered the systematic liquidation of the Jews, top priority, main purpose of the Nazi party, kill all the Jews, and you are telling us they could not get building priority?

MR RAMPTON: That is, my Lord, to misrepresent any question I have ever asked Mr Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to ----

MR RAMPTON: I never said anything about priority at all.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Professor van Pelt, did you investigate, have you regarded it as part of your brief, as it were, to investigate the extent to which Hitler knew and authorised what was going on, you say, at Auschwitz?

A. No. This has not been part of my brief.

MR IRVING: I appreciate what you are trying to say, my Lord, that I am wrong yet again. I am familiar with ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I was not saying you were wrong; I was simply saying that this is something that Professor van Pelt says is outside his remit.

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MR IRVING: I do apologise for the inference, my Lord, but, in fact, if you are an objective historian and you are looking at the files, as I have, for example, in a parallel programme, the German V weapons programme, the V1 and the V2 rockets with which your Lordship is probably also brutally familiar during the war years. I wrote a history of that project. They ran into similar kinds of priority problems for scarce materials, and the Führer's order that this programme would get a "DE" which was the highest Stufe or priority, was marked on all the appropriate contracts. "This is the Führer programme, the Führer's programme for construction of locomotives", and so on. So you did not have to be a genius or specialising in Adolf Hitler personally to find traces of the priority attached to a programme very low down in the documentation. The magic words would be uttered on the contracts and that would cut through the all red tape.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was simply making the observation that you cannot really put to this witness the extent of Hitler's involvement in the Auschwitz programme, if there was one, because it is just not within his knowledge.

MR IRVING: With your Lordship's permission, I will now do precisely that. (To the witness): Professor van Pelt, on any of the documents you saw in the Auschwitz construction office, did you see any reference at all to a special priority being attached to this by Adolf Hitler?

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A. No.

Q. Or to anybody between Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler?

A. No.

Q. There was no reference to Adolf Hitler on any of the document you saw in Auschwitz, in other words?

A. No.

Q. I am indebted to your Lordship for having prompted that line of enquiry.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a much better way of dealing with the point, if I may say so.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am totally unversed in the art of cross-examination and I am learning as I go along.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are doing, as I said before, very well.

MR IRVING: Thank you very much. (To the witness): Coming back to the eyewitnesses, you have a number of eyewitnesses you referred to. You mentioned German eyewitnesses of the activities of Sonderkommandos. Can you remember the names of any of these eyewitnesses? Would it be Pery Broad or someone like that?

A. Yes.

Q. So these eyewitnesses are people on whom, as the Germans say, you would take poison on them, you would go into the jungle with them; these are witnesses who you implicitly trust? They have not lied to us?

A. To be very honest, I would not want to go into the jungle

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with either Mr Pery Broad or Mr Höss.

Q. Or Mr Höss or Mr Bendel or any of those people; they are all rather ----

A. I would not want to trust them with my life, no. But I must say that given ----

Q. Would you like just to expand on that? What was wrong about these people then?

A. They were thoroughly unpleasant people and they were in charge of a very evil operation.

Q. Would you say that someone like Pery Broad or Mr Bendel, I think his name was, another of the eyewitnesses ----

A. Mr Bendel is not an SS man.

Q. Yes, but would you say they were lucky to survive very long after the war was over? If you were an insurance company, you would not have been inclined to offer life policy on them?

A. I did not say that at all. I think, as we know, many ex-Nazis made good careers in the various German states after the war.

Q. If they survived ----

A. One of them actually became a State Secretary to Mr Adenauer, so...

Q. Yes, if they survived the allied war crimes courts and did not end up in Hamelin in prison as a guest of [the British Government hangman] Mr Albert Pierpoint?

A. If they survived the allied war crime trials, but ----

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Q. Do you know how many German war criminals the British hanged in Hamelin?

A. No, I do not know.

Q. Of the order of 1,000 in the post-war years.

A. Thank you for that information.

Q. So people who were in middle ranking positions in the German Nazi criminal hierarchy had to be on the look out, is that correct?

A. I presume that one had to be careful, yes.

Q. And there were various ways of surviving. One was to put on a black eye patch and pretend you were not Heinrich Himmler until you were caught, and another way would be to offer to help the allies, would this be correct?

A. I think you are now making a blanket statement and I would not want to endorse it. I think that there are the situation, like any historical situation, has been rapidly changing before and after the defeat of the Germans, that there were various ways people assessed that situation, various ways that people dealt with it, and that, of course, probably since the SS was not very popular after the war and at a certain moment it was declared a criminal organisation, that if I had been an SS man, I would have been very careful. I understand most SS men were and tried to pass themselves off as something else, including Heinrich Himmler who pretended to be an ordinary soldier.

Q. Would you tell the court what the position of this

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eyewitness Mr Pery Broad -- that is P-E-R-Y Broad -- in the Auschwitz camp was?

A. Pery Broad was a kind of an administrative official in the camp Gestapo which is called the political department.

Q. So that was, as yo